Wolf Dominion Volume 2
Chapter 32

The wormhole takes you back in time.

The wormhole takes you back in time.

The wormhole takes you back in time.

The –

“You know, you could jump back before we even existed,” Seye says to me, in a memory, turned into the present or the near past. I don’t really know.

“What are you talking about?” I ask. I’m standing, I think. But I’m existing, yet I don’t really know where I am, except Seye is walking, pacing around with bright lights around her. It looks like the ship her father built. It looks like –

“It’s the only flaw – that special override.”

“What?” I whisper.

I don’t know.

I think I do know...

Seye turns to me again, and her head glistens with that crown of Solividian.

“We were first.”

The dream fades – I feel what could be a cold hand on my cheek.

A cold scrape.

A thundering explosion.

I’m out.

I’m in.

It’s everywhere. Deafening and disorienting.

I’m always wavering, within the moment, in my dreams, in my consciousness, in time. Until, eventually – I’m awake.

Actually awake!

I rise up so fast my head smashes into metal – and ash sifts up all around me, getting into my vision.

I look around me, in this furnace – and the crumpled door to the Incinerator, gaping open.

I smash it open with my fist and climb out.

I fall down in a heap, my metal foot so heavy it bangs on the floor.

I don’t know what happened. I –

I look around me frantically, eye sight perfect – despite everything.

The cloning hull is destroyed in the Acklen, and there is sweet air filtering in. Forest air. It’s so intense it’s almost sickening. I’m so used to dry tasteless air.

I suck in a breath, choking on the need to cry but I can’t waste anymore tears. I feel my heart is strong to be beating – but it’s weak over all.

I have no idea what, how, when – my only thought is water.

I hear it. I see it. There is a trickle of it, a stream running down the sloping floor. Everything is wet, so it must have rained recently.

I crawl over to it, and lick the stream.

The only other time I drank water like this, was when I first saw Skye, while trapped in a pyramid cage.

Alpha Skye.

I hear that thunder exploding in my ears – really it’s in my brain. A very close memory.

I probably woke up for a second as the Acklen crash landed into Earth.

Even licking the water is getting tiresome – and exhaustion causes my head to loll forward.

The water hits my brain.

My dream becomes a tiny bit clearer.

I’m not standing. I’m crumpled against a wall. Broken legs. Broken arms. Maybe a broken spine – because I can’t move. I can’t feel anything either.

Seye stands in front of me after pacing, dressed in a beautiful grey military dress. Robes from Genesis, while standing on the smoking ship, speaking to me, “The wormhole takes you back in time.”

Oh, I do know now.

I know alright.

They.

They departed Genesis after us.

But arrived before.

I see a dark shadow, appear to my left.

Seye is still speaking, but I can smell him.

I can’t turn my neck – but my eyes at least can turn.

All I see, all I hear, is thunder.

As a laser blows the brains right out of my head.

I wake up different this time.

Adrenaline gets me to stand – a thin Luna, but still a Luna.

Balancing on the sloping edge, I look around the abandoned wreck.

I don’t have to look far until my eyes land on her.

Human Ryder.

She’s there – nothing but a corpse, still rotting, blood still staining the seat behind her head where she was strapped in.

I walk right up to her – emotions thwarted.

I wasn’t even buried.

No wonder I couldn’t rest.

I open the latches strapping in over her decaying body, stained with gore, and I watch the corpse drop forward and then slide all the way down to the brush below, now covered in something. Buried at last.

I turn to the seats that held Opular and Hades.

Empty. Of course they survived.

I have no doubt about that.

Adrenaline is still coursing through my veins as I replace a different way off the wreckage, climbing down another incline of the metal wreck, so I don’t have to look at my dead human body again.

When I hit the soil of a wet fertile forest, in the middle of nowhere – I at least feel relief that I have time.

I walk forward into wet muddy grass.

Growing in a large impact crater.

How long had I been in that coma and been able to survive?

I have no idea.

I should be dead.

But here I am.

I walk to the top of the crater and I look around.

I’m not really in the middle of nowhere.

I can see a city. A skeleton of one at least.

Whatever make shift buildings are held up there, most are burning or covered in smoke.

I also hear faint explosions – and rapid gun fire.

I witness large light beams too – lasers, firing back.

It’s a light show of a horror playing out right before my eyes.

Nothing but that city stands, the ancient suburbs around it are flattened by shells from a different human war long past.

Earth wasn’t much when we left it – and it was worse since our return. Even so, I still have no idea where I am. What country this is. What city. I have no clue.

But the forest extends everywhere for miles and miles, and the city is the thing that looks out of place. The more I stare at it, the more I realise it looks new, rather than old. Like a new attempt at living. But it’s burning to the ground.

Whatever humans were left on Earth…

Now they were fighting aliens too.

After too long standing still, I spot something at the corner of my eye.

I can’t believe I almost missed the tower right next to me.

As I turn to the right – Wolf Dominion’s spacecraft is perfectly upright, a few thousand feet from me, over a steep hill.

From the top, I see the damn podium protruding from Skye’s residence.

And.

I even see him.

Skye is observing the burning city from his podium.

And in that moment, his head happens to turn toward the wreck of the Acklen.

I stand completely still – but he has not seen me. He can’t. I don’t exist.

Skye turns around completely and he walks inside.

I walk into the trees, my nose overwhelmed. I’m out of place. I don’t get far when I see a half eaten carcass of a deer, torn two ways, one half thrown up into a tree. Large teeth ripped right into it. Very. Large. Teeth. Teeth from Wolf Beasts.

I had to keep an eye out then for those as well.

Lest, after surviving, I become giant dog food.

I just hope Xrat is safe down here.

I hear a rumble then, not too far into my walk – and I look through the heavy trees to the very base of Wolf Dominion, where I see a tank straight out of science fiction movie – with an open top, and Skye over looking the direction – heading away from the Dominion with other Genesis soldiers guarding him.

I watch him roll along toward the city.

The Dominion itself is silent after his swift departure – as if it’s empty.

What the fuck do I do now?

I was still shell shocked. Right through the head. Literally.

“Psst. Hey.”

I turn my head to the sound, coming from above. I’m not delusional as I see a thin teenage boy on top of the hill looking down at me. He has hollow cheeks – and hopeful eyes.

When he has my attention, he wipes the smile from his face and takes a gun out of his loose pants, to point it at me. His arm is barely steady.

Look.

If a human rebel was going to kill me?

There was nothing I could do.

I just stare at the relatively tall human teen and wait for the shot to end my life a second time.

The boy holds that gun as he waits for me to scream. Why wait.

All I do is stare.

Maybe it’s the fact I’m naked and every inch of me is covered in ash, or I probably look close to as near starved as him.

Or maybe it’s something in my eyes, but the human teen only lowers the small gun slightly, before he speaks again, “…you don’t look like them… but you must be one of them…” he murmurs, “What in hell happened to you? You look like you just walked out of that wreck. How is that possible?” I don’t know what to say, “Hey. I’m pointing a gun at you. I can kill you with this. Don’t you want to say something to me? Last words? I’m going to kill you.”

Now I do know what to say.

“I doubt it,” I rasp out, my voice is so husky it’s barely recognisable, “I don’t tend to die well.”

I sound somewhat humorous, and the guy kind of smiles – almost.

“That makes two of us,” he chuckles for a second, then wipes that budding smile from his lips, and shakes off the rising emotion, “But that ends for you now.”

He’s trying really hard to be a solider.

He actually pulls the trigger – but my instincts go into overdrive.

It was built into me.

I move my head to the side as he points, and the bullet just kisses my ear, and shoots through my hair, but it doesn’t leave a single mark.

The extra adrenaline keeps me upright.

For a bit more anyway.

He’s staring, speechless, barrel smoking.

“I guess you’re wrong,” I try to joke, even as he’s murmuring under his breath, sounding a little crazy. He tries aiming and pulling the trigger again, but I side step this one, and then a fainting spell hits – and I fall to my knees. My vision focuses on him still holding the gun up, he missed a second shot, he was wasting his ammunition. I advise him, “Just breathe deep and aim a little higher, because you’re lowering the gun every time before you shoot…” I think of Jawkin, “You have terrible aim –”

I fall into the dirt while talking.

Maybe he has run out of bullets, but he’s also coming toward me with raging curiosity in his eyes. It’s the last thing I see before I’m down.

I recognise what it is even though it’s been so long.

Mercy.

Human mercy.

I think maybe I’ll live another day.